Budget crisis: Something doesn’t add up

Now comes news that Nevada legislators are engaged in private talks with public employee unions about the state budget.

Two questions. Why the back-room talks? Why only public employee unions?

This goes to the suspicion that even in this recession legislators remain more focused on protecting (or, if possible, enhancing) state worker pay and benefits than they are on the effective delivery of state services to taxpayers. It leaves cynics to wonder whether Nevada's budget crisis is contrived to raise taxes?

Not sure I'd go that far, but something doesn't quite add up. On the one hand legislators whisper of a $3 billion budget shortfall and a crisis that will require big new taxes. On the other hand they fiddle around with window-dressing legislation and do no public work to lay the groundwork for closing the shortfall -- either on the expense side of the ledger or the revenue side of the ledger.

Look, folks, it's either a crisis, or it isn't. Don't say it is a crisis, then go about your business as if it were a normal year.

In the meanwhile, legislators should take a look at the news just this weekend in other big tax states around the country to see that failure to control spending results in unsustainable budgets.

For a review of stories this weekend on that lesson consider ...

    -- The fire chief in California who converted his $185k annual salary into a $241k yearly pension.

    -- How public pensions in California threaten to "gobble up" entire budgets.

    -- The battle in San Diego over employee benefit concessions.

    -- The fight in Massachusetts to overall the state's pension system.

    All of these headlines come from the website Pensiontsunami.com. All Nevada legislators would do well to bookmark this site and read it daily. Perhaps they should read it aloud in the "talks" they are having with public employee unions.